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Who Got Rich This Week: A Toyota Target, An IT Innovator And More

Each week at Forbes we scan our database of corporate insiders to see who got richer from the action in the stock market. Disappointing earnings reports from several large concerns weighed on shares this week, as the S&P 500 sank 3%, driven lower by revised earnings guidance and pessimistic economic forecasts from global bellwethers such as mining and construction equipment maker Caterpillar. The company now expects 2012 sales of $66 billion, down from earlier guidance of $68 billion to $70 billion, blaming “global economic conditions that are weaker than we had previously expected.” Macroeconomic pessimism, combined with political uncertainty here in the United States, made this week a tough one to be in equities. Yet, as usual, several insiders managed to log impressive gains over the past seven days. Here, some of the biggest winners from the past week:

Cash Acquisition

Cascade Corporation, which began as a four-man machine shop in Portland, Oregon in 1943, is now an international manufacturer of materials handling load engagement devices for the lift truck industry. In other words, the company makes the forks on the front of forklifts. Cascade, which went public way back in 1965, did $536 million in revenue last year. On Monday, the outfit agreed to be acquired by Japanese automaker, Toyota, for $65 per share, a 19.6% premium over last Friday’s open. The all-cash deal, which values the smaller firm at $759 million, will make Robert C. Warren, Jr., President and CEO of Cascade since 1996, a very wealthy man. His more than 1.9 million shares are now worth approximately $125.4 million, about $20.6 million more than they were worth last Friday. Warren is planning to stay on with the company after the deal closes, which is expected to happen by the end of this year.

Cash Cloud

Steven McCanne co-founded FastForward Networks in May 1998. Just two years later FastForward was acquired by Inktomi Corporation. After serving as Chief Technology Officer at the infrastructure software company, McCanne departed in 2002 and co-founded Riverbed Technology. The firm provides solutions for corporate IT departments, from cloud computing tools to WAN optimization products. Just ten years in, Riverbed appears to be another hit for McCanne with over 19,000 customers, 1,005 of which are members of Forbes Global 2000. McCanne, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and served on the faculty at his alma mater, also holds nearly 4.1 million shares of Riverbed. After Riverbed announced third quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates last Friday, shares rose 10.3% over the course of the week. McCanne’s stake is now worth approximately $92.8 million, a gain of $8.7 million in seven days.

Rich In Real Time

Of the 50 billionaires whose wealth Forbes tracks in real time, Jeff Bezos was Friday’s biggest winner by far, in both nominal and percentage terms. Though Amazon reported a quarterly loss, operating performance was better than projected by both the company and Wall Street analysts. The results sent shares of the online retailer higher by 4.7% and resulted in a paper gain of nearly $1 billion for Bezos. Joining Bezos atop the pile were several other technology titans, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who made $271.38 million on the session, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who gained $155.62 million and Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, who enjoyed a bounce worth $152.08 million and $109.94 million, respectively. Others were not so lucky. After popping more than 20% on Wednesday, Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz found their way back to the bottom on Friday, as the biggest losers in percentage terms. A 2.53% pullback in Facebook’s share price resulted in a loss of $277.04 million for Zuckerberg and a loss of $72 million for Moskovitz.

Reflects changes from the market open on Friday October 19 through the open on Friday October 26, 2012.

Thanks to Scott DeCarlo for building and maintaining our insider database screen.

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